Thursday, March 28, 2013

2013 Investing in Innovation (i3) Competition Launched

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has announced the start of the 2013 Investing in Innovation (i3) program. With a total of $150 million in funding, ED has released the pre-application for the i3 Development grant category.

Focused on improving student achievement, the i3 program is designed to generate and validate solutions to persistent educational challenges and to support the expansion of effective solutions across the country. As in past years, the i3 program will continue to fund innovative strategies within three distinct categories:

Development grants fund the development or testing of practices that are supported by evidence of promise or theory (as defined by ED). Development grants will support new or substantially more effective practices for addressing widely shared challenges.

Validation grants fund the expansion of projects supported by moderate evidence of effectiveness (as defined by ED) to the national or regional level.

Scale-up grants fund the expansion of projects supported by strong evidence of effectiveness (as defined by ED) to the national level. In addition to improving outcomes for an increasing number of high-need students, Scale-up grants will generate information about the students and contexts for which a practice is most effective.

The pre-applications for the Validation and Scale-Up grants will be announced in spring 2013.

The guidance released by ED includes the 2013 program priorities, which target specific areas of need. This year’s priorities for the Development grant category include:

In 2012, more than 650 potential grantees submitted pre-applications for Development grants. Pre-applications for the 2013 i3 Development grants are due April 26, 2013. ED will conduct a peer review process of the pre-applications. Those pre-applications that are highly rated will be invited to apply for the Development competition and will be given additional time to complete the full application.

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Welcome to the Investing in Community Change blog! Brought to you by the Neighborhood Investment team of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the blog is designed to provide real-time information on how to access and influence key funding opportunities that support strategies to improve results forlow-income children and families. The blog focuses on neighborhood strategies like workforce development, asset building, reading success, community development, organizational capacity and resident engagement.

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